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Newsletter 193 - March 2004

In this issue:

• Annual General Meeting
• Committee Report on the Year
• Your Committee
• And finally...
• Annual Accounts
• Treasurer's Report
• Elections

Annual General Meeting

The Society's 25th Annual General Meeting will be held at 7:30 pm on Monday 22nd March 2004 in the Chartwell Room at the Hilton Metropole Hotel.

Agenda

1. Minutes of the Previous AGM
2. Committee Report for the Year
3. Treasurer's Report & Annual Accounts
4. Subscription Rates for 2005
5. Election of Officers and Committee

After the formal agenda there will be a chance for members to raise any issues they wish to discuss.

The evening will conclude with a magic lantern show presented by Rene and Allan Marriott. They will tell us a bit about the history of the magic lantern and show us some of the slides from their own collection and from the collection at Brighton Museum, including many local views.

Refreshments will be served and there will be a raffle.

Committee Report on the Year

The West Pier: the year started with a piece of bad news: the Council approved St Modwen's plans for buildings on the seafront either side of the West Pier.

After all the effort put in by the Save Our Seafront campaign this came as a major disappointment. SOS had succeeded in raising people's awareness about the plans and, as a result, thousands objected. Even so the Council approved a scheme which would ruin one of Brighton's greatest assets, its seafront.

The planning decision threw the ball back to the National Heritage Lottery Fund, which then passed it to English Heritage. Their job was to advise on whether the pier was worth re-building, at a cost to the Lottery Fund of around £15 million.

After what seemed like endless delay English Heritage produced a weighty report which said "Yes" the pier was worth re-building; this seemed to seal the fate of the seafront.

Then much to our surprise some good news. St Modwen told the Lottery Fund they needed several more millions and the Lottery Fund said "No.", not just to the extra millions but to the whole scheme: It was too expensive and there was too much of a risk that even more money would eventually be needed.

Ironically the seafront has been saved by the very developers who were willing to destroy it. By asking for more money they killed the plan altogether.

The final (?) twist in the tail was an announcement by English Heritage that they now believe it is possible to re-build the pier in its original form without any enabling development at all. We will see!

Communal Bins: a year cannot go by without someone mentioning rubbish. In fact the problem of bags of rubbish in our streets has been significantly reduced during the year, thanks largely to the excellent work of the Council's enforcement officers, Matt Easteal and Lisa White.

Even so, the Council has started a trial of communal bins in some areas of the town, such as Oriental Place. The scheme may well be extended into our area if the trial is judged to be a success.

The committee had a lengthy discussion with two of the Council Officers involved. They made it clear that the main objective of the scheme was to reduce the cost of refuse collection and hence provide more money to pay for re-cycling.

The Society has expressed reservations about the scheme, but we are now waiting to see the outcome of the trial.

Other Issues: as always the committee has dealt with a range of other problems during the year.

We supported the Council's decision not to allow a modern block of flats at number 128, Kings Road. Unfortunately the Council was over-ruled by the Secretary of State.

As requested at last year's AGM we have surveyed the state of the roads and pavements in our area and drawn the Council's attention to specific problems needing attention.

The plan to close the junction between Clarence Square and Western Road won the support of some members on safety grounds, while others saw it as increasing the problems for car owners living in the area. The committee decided to support the closure, while asking the Council to review traffic management in Cannon Place to ease problems for local residents with cars.

We organised a meeting in October for members to meet our two local councillors. Other events during the year were a boat trip from the Marina past Regency Square on a beautiful August evening, a guided walk with local historian, Geoff Mead, and New Year breakfast at the Regency Restaurant.

Your Committee

Early in the year we lost a valuable member of our committee when Sue Paskins won a seat on the Council for the Green Party.

It seemed recently that we were going to lose another member, Traude Tappin. However, she has now been able to re-arrange her other commitments and plans to stand for re-election, together with the other remaining members.

And finally...

... many thanks to everyone who was helped the Society during the year.

Annual Accounts

2003/04 Income and Expenditure summary
Income	£	Expenditure	£
Subscriptions	430	Printing etc.	393
General Donations	398	Insurance	250
SOS Donations	30	SOS expenses	105
Website sponsorship	165	Website expenses	287
Functions	46	Functions	57
Interest	20	Subscriptions	25
Deficit for the year	28
	1,117		1,117
Balance Sheet
Funds at 28/2/03	1,688	Cash & bank	1,830
Less deficit	(28)
Funds at 29/2/04	1,660
Advance subs	91
Advance donations	79
	1,830		1,830

Treasurer's Report

There was a slight deficit over the year after a surplus the year before. The full cost of the web site was not covered in spite of sponsorship.

The Regency Square Improvement Fund, which was used last year to support the aims of the Save Our Seafront campaign, was untouched and now stands at £4,456.

Elections

The following people are standing for re-election:

Chairman: Roger Hinton - Regency Square
Secretary: John Gavin - Queensbury Mews
Treasurer: Andrew Walker - Chartwell Court

Members:

Ron Bakere - Sussex Heights
Ros Boulden - Abbotts
Clive Buxton - Dean Street
Diana Dunn - Clarence Gardens
Tony Lowery - Metropole Court
Traude Tappin - Astra House

Two new nominations for election are John Clinton (St Margaret's Place) and Norma Williams (Sussex Heights.)

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